Rainer Küschall (born 17 April 1947 in

Flims, Switzerland Flims ( rm, Flem) is a municipality in the Imboden Region in the Swiss canton of Graubünden. The town of Flims is dominated by the Flimserstein which one can see from almost anywhere in the area. Flims consists of the village of Flims (called ...

) is a Swiss

tetraplegic Tetraplegia, also known as quadriplegia, is defined as the dysfunction or loss of motor and/or sensory function in the cervical area of the spinal cord. A loss of motor function can present as either weakness or paralysis leading to partial or ...

, car racer, inventor and designer.

Accident

At the age of 16, Küschall sustained a severe injury to his cervical spine at the level of the C4-C6 vertebrae. At the time, there was no treatment available for quadriplegia, and he spent the following two years bedbound in different hospitals. Küschall then met the neurologist and neurosurgeon

Ludwig Guttmann Sir Ludwig Guttmann (3 July 1899 – 18 March 1980) was a German-British neurologist who established the Stoke Mandeville Games, the sporting event for people with disabilities (PWD) that evolved in England into the Paralympic Games. A Jewis ...

who founded

Stoke Mandeville Hospital Stoke Mandeville Hospital is a large National Health Service (NHS) hospital located on the parish borders of Aylesbury and Stoke Mandeville, Buckinghamshire, England. It is managed by Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust. It was established i ...

. Guttmann was the first to place Küschall into a wheelchair and a difficult period of rehabilitation followed.

Career

After many years of rehabilitation and sports, Küschall started his first job as an office clerk in 1976. However, this work proved impossible for him and he left after two weeks. At home, Küschall tinkered around with an old wheelchair and improved it with a few essential changes. This eventually led him to establish

Küschall Küschall AG, headquartered in Witterswil, Switzerland, is a wheelchair manufacturing company. History 1978–1995 The company was founded in 1978 by Rainer Küschall who was quadriplegic. Küschall's first successful model was the "Competiti ...

AG. Küschall began serial production of wheelchairs in 1976 – first in his living room, later in a factory. After a severe infection which caused a coma, Küschall sold his company to

Invacare Invacare Corporation is an American manufacturer and distributor of non-acute medical equipment including wheelchairs, mobility scooters, walkers, pressure care and positioning, as well as respiratory products. Headquartered in Elyria, Ohio, the ...

, a major medical equipment manufacturer based in the US, in 1996. After several years Küschall recovered and took on the responsibility for engineering and product development as the company's research and development director.

Invention of the monotube designs

Until the 1980s, wheelchairs were heavy vehicles which were almost impossible for the patient themselves to manoeuvre. In 1985, Rainer Küschall designed a completely new wheelchair which only weighed 14 instead of the usual 25 kilograms and had a volume that was 40% smaller. By reducing the weight and adding new adjustment possibilities for seated positions, Küschall increased the range of uses and the mobility of the

wheelchair A wheelchair is a chair with wheels, used when walking is difficult or impossible due to illness, injury, problems related to old age, or disability. These can include spinal cord injuries ( paraplegia, hemiplegia, and quadriplegia), cerebr ...

and established the now common monotube design. The product, which he called the Competition (known as Champion 3000 in the USA), was revolutionary at the time and is still one of the most copied basic designs for wheelchairs today. In 1986, Küschall received the award of the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

. The Competition wheelchair was the first medical device added to the collection at the MoMA and is still exhibited there. One of its successor models weighs only 6.7 kilograms. File:Küschall wheelchair.jpg, Active wheelchair from Küschall in the Monotube-Design File:Medline F-1 manual wheelchair 2.JPG, Active wheelchair in the old box design

Sporting career

Küschall began playing table tennis during his rehabilitation at

in the 1960s and participated in the Summer Paralympics for the first time in 1968. From 1982 onwards, he devoted himself to wheelchair racing and broke the world record for almost every distance on several occasions. By the end of his paralympic sporting career in 1992, Küschall had won 21 paralympic medals and was five times world champion.Exotische Fahrzeuge
(German, PDF, 446 KB) In 2002, Küschall bought an

AC Cobra The AC Cobra, sold in the United States as the Shelby Cobra and AC Shelby Cobra, is a sports car manufactured by British company AC Cars, with a Ford V8 engine. It was produced intermittently in both the United Kingdom and later the Unite ...

427 which he has been driving ever since as the first Swiss quadriplegic with an international motor racing license.

Notes

External links